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: There have been interesting developments on the Linux front. You now have a serious competitor in the form of Novell with Suse Linux. Did this deal have a significant impact on the enterprise Linux market?
The success and visibility of Linux has definitely resulted in new competitors emerging. Competition is good; we do not want to be a category leader in a category of one. Such a situation does not challenge the leader, and this is a prime reason why the desktop software market has not changed significantly.
That said, it is extremely difficult to integrate a proprietary model with an open source model. While many companies have announced open source strategies, few have had the vision to execute these strategies. Unless these companies show reference customers and demonstrate ISV support for their platform, CIOs will not rush to implement their products. The whole market knows the situation, and I would like to quote Bob Dylan who sang, ‘You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.’
Red Hat’s business model relies purely on paid support. However, most Indian CIOs prefer to pay an upfront licence fee instead of paying for a service. What are you doing to change this mindset?
I agree it is a challenge to educate Indian CIOs on the benefits of using a subscription model as most of them are not aware of its benefits. We have been trying to tell them that this model gives a CIO the opportunity to tap into the benefits of Linux with technical support from Red Hat.
Upgrades are also included in the same price; we do not charge for them. Compare this with the traditional approach where you pay a huge licence fee for each user with additional expenditure towards annual maintenance fees. Further, their upgrades do not come for free. We realise that every region is unique in its own way, and are evaluating whether we should change the pricing of our subscription model in India to encourage adoption.
Putting Linux on the desktop is one of your ambitions. Why do you think a Linux desktop would succeed in a market dominated by Microsoft Windows?
Desktop customers have become tired of dealing with vendors whose products need frequent patch updates. With every virus attack, users are going to be more wary of choosing their operating system. Security is one of the biggest draws of using Linux on the...
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